CCCclxXvi LIFE OF BACON. 



His consciousness of the wanderings of his mind made 

 him run into affairs with over-acted zeal and a variety of 

 useless subtleties ; and in lending himself to matters im 

 measurably beneath him, he sometimes stooped too low. 

 A man often receives an unfortunate bias from an unjust 

 censure. Bacon, who was said by Elizabeth to be without 

 knowledge of affairs, and by Cecil and Burleigh to be unfit 

 for business, affected through the whole of his life an over- 



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refinement in trifles and a political subtlety unworthy of 

 so great a mind : it is also true that he sometimes seemed 

 conscious of the pleasure of skill, and that he who possessed 

 the dangerous power of &quot; working and winding&quot; others to 

 his purpose, tried it upon the little men whom his heart 

 disdained ; but that heart was neither &quot; cloven nor double.&quot; 

 There is no record that he abused the influence which he 

 possessed over the minds of all men. He ever gave honest 

 counsel to his capricious mistress, and her pedantic 

 successor ; to the rash, turbulent Essex, and to the wily, 

 avaricious Buckingham. There is nothing more lamentable 

 in the annals of mankind than that false position, which 

 placed one of the greatest minds England ever possessed 

 at the mercy of a mean king and a base court favourite. 



